established taboos are useless or mischievous
restraints; that usages which are suitable for a village or a colony are
not suitable for a great city or state; that many things are fitting
when the community is rich which were not so when it was poor; that new
inventions have made new ways of living more economical and healthful.
It is necessary to prosperity that the mores should have a due degree of
firmness, but also that they should be sufficiently elastic and flexible
to conform to changes in interests and life conditions. A herding or an
agricultural people, if it moves into a new country, rich in game, may
revert to a hunting life. The Tunguses and Yakuts did so as they moved
northwards.[105] In the early days of the settlement of North America
many whites "Indianized"; they took to the mode of life of Indians. The
Iranians separated from the Indians of Hindostan and became
agriculturists. They adopted a new religion and new mores. Men who were
afraid of powerful enemies have taken to living in trees, lake
dwellings, caves, and joint houses. Mediaeval serfdom was due to the need
of force to keep the peasant on his holding, when the holding was really
a burden to him in view of the dues which he must pay. He would have run
away if he had not been kept by force. In the later Middle Ages the
villain had a valuable right and property in his holding. Then he wanted
security of tenure so that he could not be driven away from it. In the
early period it was the duty of the lord to kill the game and protect
the peasant's crops. In the later period it became the monopoly right of
the lord to kill game. Thus the life conditions vary. The economic
conjuncture varies. The competition of life varies. The interests vary
with them. The mores all conform, unless they have been fixed by dogma
with mystic sanctions so that they are ritual obligations, as is, in
general, the case now in southeastern Asia. The rights of the parties,
and the right and wrong of conduct, after the mores have conformed to
new life conditions, are new deductions. The philosophers follow with
their systems by which they try to construe the whole new order of acts
and thoughts with reference to some thought fabric which they put before
the mores, although it was found out after the mores had established the
relations. In the case in which the fixed mores do not conform to new
interests and needs crises arise. Moses, Zoroaster, Manu, Solon,
Lycurgus, and Numa